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Smith grew up in Northampton (located in the East Midlands of England) and attended Northampton School for Boys, mocked for having a face "with elbows".[1]. He originally wanted to be a footballer but had to give up this ambition after a back injury. He excelled at sports in school. Matt supports Blackburn Rovers.[2][1] After encouragement from his drama teacher, he joined the National Youth Theatre. He studied at University of East Anglia, reading Drama and Creative Writing. He did not attend a Drama school.

Matt Smith appeared opposite Billie Piper (who played former companion Rose Tyler) in The Ruby In The Smoke, The Shadow In The North, and Secret Diary Of A Call Girl. On stage, he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for That Face in 2008. At twenty-seven years of age, Smith is the youngest actor ever to have played the Doctor on television (a record held for more than a quarter-century by Peter Davison) and the first and so far only to be born after the death of the First Doctor, William Hartnell. Following the conclusion of contract negotiations around Christmas2008, Smith's casting was formally announced during a special broadcast of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three on 3 January2009. Smith began filming his first full episodes as the Doctor in late July 2009.

The exact date of when Matt was cast is uncertain. It is known that Russell T Davies was informed on or just before 10 December 2008[3], but during interviews conducted in March and April 2010 to promote Series 5, Smith repeatedly stated that he had to keep quiet about being cast for three months before the announcement, suggesting he may have been cast as early as October 2008. Smith announced his departure from Doctor Who on June 1st, 2013, being replaced with Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor in The Time of the Doctor. However, a scene was filmed during his final episode which shows the Doctor phoning Clara in the near future concerning his next incarnation; through this scene Matt returned as the Doctor one last time in a brief cameo appearance at the end of Deep Breath.

In the 2013 comic story The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, Matt Smith encounters the Eleventh Doctor twice during an incident in which the Doctor finds himself in a parallel universe in which his adventures are chronicled in a TV series titled Doctor Who starring Smith. Smith meets the Doctor first at a Doctor Who convention where he initially thinks the Doctor is an expert cosplayer, and later during filming of an episode at which time he realises the Doctor is real. Before departing for his own universe, the Doctor recommends Peter Capaldi to Smith as a potential future Doctor. Although the story was promoted as taking place in the "Real World", this is not the case as Smith describes plotlines for episodes that were never made.